Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
A publication of
At the end of the past century, the field of process safety was initiated thanks to the skills and industrial
experience of pioneers such as Trevor Kletz, Hans Pasman, Joaquim Casal and André Laurent. Pioneers
relied on their skills and desire to solve problems since formal safety education was not developed until the
late 1990s with examples such as the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center at the Texas A&M
University in the US. After 30 years of Kletz's first safety-related book, the panorama has changed with
engineering education integrating safety, thanks to initiatives such as ABET accreditation and others detailed
in recently published reviews. However, safety is still a concept being debated and constructed in both
education and practice, with open questions such as "How is safety linked to risk?" The authors view process
safety as a set of evolving tools and growing knowledge supporting risk assessment and aiding decision-
making. This process is carried out under uncertainty related to the complexity of the systems, the availability
of data and the competence of the analysts involved. Uncertainty and its management constitute critical
challenges for process safety educators and practitioners. In this context, the authors want to answer: how
does process safety education integrate complexity and uncertainty management? To answer it, the authors
conduct a review of formal educational programs and specific courses with a focus on uncertainty, as well as
their teaching and consulting experience. The results help to formulate a set of recommendations to improve
the handling of complexity and uncertainty management in different levels of safety education.
1. Introduction
Growing complexity and economical optimization constraints make the development of new hazardous
facilities a challenge for all engineering fields involved. At the same time, the deployment of new chemical and
petrochemical facilities continues to increase (Reniers, Amyotte 2012). The complexity and economic
constraints of these facilities can lead to failures and possibly to major accidents with unacceptable
consequences such as off-site casualties and environmental damage. Process safety engineers are in charge
of the risk management processes that prevents, controls and mitigates such events and their consequences.
Such responsibility requires competence from all engineers involved and particularly from the process safety
engineers, which is built through learning at all educational levels: undergraduate and postgraduate education
and continuous professional development. Mkpat et al. (Mkpat, Reniers, Cozzani, 2018) present a detailed
review of process safety education, with a particular emphasis on the way chemical engineering curricula
integrate process safety and the interactions between key stakeholders, i.e., academia, industry, government.
At the University education level, both Mkpat et al. (Mkpat, Reniers, Cozzani, 2018) and Dee et al. (Dee, Cox,
Ogle, 2015) identify those main topics being taught include mechanical integrity, hazards identification,
consequence, and emergency planning. These topics can be associated with the steps of the risk
management process as described by ISO 31000:2018, with an essential focus on the components of risk
assessment. Figure 1 presents the elements of risk management, and identifies those predominantly
addressed by practitioners in the industry and therefore with less learning components in academia.
Paper Received: 16 November 2018; Revised: 19 April 2019; Accepted: 20 June 2019
Please cite this article as: Cadena J., Munoz F., 2019, Complexity and Uncertainty Management in Process Safety education, Chemical
Engineering Transactions, 77, 433-438 DOI:10.3303/CET1977073
434
Risk treatment
Figure 1: ISO 31000:2018 risk management process and its relation to education and practice
To ensure that University education provides students with the competency as process safety engineers,
accreditation institutions such as Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) establish a set
of outcomes in which safety is highlighted, with particular focus in hazards identification. ABET sets out 11
outcomes expected from a chemical engineering graduate, from which the (c) outcome relates to the design of
a process meeting realistic constraints including health, safety and environmental. Although safety can be
associated with all outcomes, this outcome is of particular relevance for educational purposes given that risk
management begins with process design, which is usually overseen by chemical engineers. At the same time,
risk assessments are initiated at early design stages and following through all the life-cycle of the operation,
requiring the use of different input information and models that support calculations and estimations, such as
gas dispersion modeling. Risk assessments results support the decision-making processes of the
stakeholders concerning safety measures in operations, including land-use planning. Bringing all these
elements together, risk assessment and the technical elements it involves constitute a central element of the
responsibilities of a process safety engineers and therefore, of their education. Recent research (Goertlandt et
al 2016; Rae 2012) has identified considerable uncertainty in the results of quantitative risk assessments
(QRA) which is explained when analyzing each of its steps. The first step is a process hazard analysis (PHA),
which allow identifying hazards and include a wide range of techniques, e.g., Hazards and Operability
Analysis (HAZOP). In these analyses, different scenarios are analyzed to identify potential consequences and
determined measures required to prevent, control and mitigate them. Researchers have presented that PHAs
can miss up to 47% accidents occurring in facilities (Goertlandt, Khazad, Reniers, 2016), given the qualitative
nature of these analyses and that, analysts do not know what they do not know. The second step is comprised
of consequence and probability (or frequency) analyses, using inputs related to the operating conditions and
characteristics of the facility. For consequence analysis of each accidental scenario, a wide range of models
are used which differ in complexity, precision, and accuracy, all requiring competent users and adequate
inputs. For probability analysis, different options exist including the use of qualitative descriptions, generic
failure frequencies (e.g. OREDA) for design stages, probability distribution functions and the use of random
sampling techniques such as Monte Carlo or (ideally) failure data from the facility.
The issues across each step of risk assessments are essential to explain the reported uncertainty and to
throw light on the role of process safety education in addressing these issues. As Mannan (Mannan, 1999)
stated about two decades ago, regulations and recommended practices are only an element in the solution to
the safety issues an operation can face. The other element is the education received by engineers and in
particular that these professionals understand the fundamental issues of implementing safety from the design
and throughout the life-cycle of the operation. In light of the technical and human advancements achieved in
the field of safety in these two decades and the improvement of chemical engineering curricula thanks to
accreditations such as ABET, this paper presents a detailed picture of how complexity and uncertainty in risk
assessments are addressed. The picture is presented in Section 2 and is based on a search for curricula and
specific case-studies, as well as in the experience of the authors. Finally, a set of conclusions along with
recommendations in Section 3, aiming at answering the following questions: 1) How can we better address
uncertainty and complexity in risk assessments?; 2) How can we better convey the importance of risk
assessment results in decision-making processes?; 3) What are the essential skills to be developed and what
decisions do they support?
435
Figure 1. Flowchart of Safety Science construction and its relation with key stakeholders
errors. The reality is not different even for a simple overpressure calculation using the TNT equivalence
model. Furthermore, the Center for Chemical Process Safety establishes competency as one of the 20
elements of the Risk Based Process Safety model. This is presented in CCPS (2010) as one of the key
elements for process safety commitment pillar, where a general framework for maintaining competency in the
industry is presented. However, this framework does no state the relevance of explicitly addressing
uncertainty in the course of process safety tasks.
To the question of what are the essential skills to be developed and what decisions do they support? The
authors believe that the capacity of safety engineers to recognize their limitations in knowledge and tools,
especially for complex systems, is key to achieve a continuously better risk management. Recognizing there
are unknown unknowns over which no feasible control exists besides permanent monitoring and an explicit
consideration of assumptions, is essential. This brief review and the considerations presented regarding
treatment of uncertainty in process safety education, an sets the foundations for further work.
References
Amyotte P., Reniers, G., 2012, Prevention in the chemical and process industries: Future directions, Journal of
Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 25, 227-231
Aven T., Renn O., 2009, On risk defined as an even where the outcome is uncertain, Journal of Risk
Research, 12, 1, 1-11
Aven T., 2014, What is safety science?, Safety Science, 67, 15-20
Beard A., 2005, Requirements for acceptable model use, Fire Safety Journal, 40, 477–484
Beard A., 1996, Fire Models and Design, Fire Safety Journal, 28, 117-138
Benintendi R., 2016, The bridge link between university and industry: A key factor for achieving high
performance in process safety, Education for Chemical Engineers, 15, 23-32
Brenig, H., Haputmanns U., Klais O., Schmidt J., Moritz H., Schönbucher A., 2013, Recommendation for
education in a Bologna Three-Cycle Degree System, Model Curriculum: Process and Plant Safety,
DECHEMA, ISBN 978-3-89746-141-3
Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), 2010, Guidelines for Risk Based Process Safety, John Wiley &
Sons, Chapter 5, 89-122
Dee S., Cox B., Ogle R., 2015, Process safety in the classroom: The current state of chemical engineering
programs at US universities, Process Safety Progress, 34, 316-319
Degreve J., Berghmans J., 2012, Master of science in safety engineering at KU Leuven, Belgium, Procedia
Engineering, 45, 276 – 280
Goerlandt, F., N. Khakzad and G. Reniers, 2016, Validity and validation of safety-related quantitative risk
analysis: A review, Safety Science, 127-139
Kaplan, S. and B. J. Garrick, 1981, On The Quantitative Definition of Risk, Risk Analysis, 1, 11-27
Kennedy P., Duffy N., Horgan S., Lynch M., 2015, Chemical Process Safety Education: Joint Industry-
Academic venture, HAZARDS 25, 1-8
Mannan S., Akgerman A., Anthony R., Darby R,, Eubank P., Hall K., 1999, Integrating process safety into ChE
education and research, Chemical Engineering Education, 33, 198-209
Mkpat E., Reniers G., Cozzani V., 2018, Process safety education: A literature review, Journal of Loss
Prevention in the Process Industries, 54, 18-27
Noakes N., Chow C., Ko E., McKay G., 2011, Safety education for chemical engineering students in Hong
Kong: Development of HAZOP Study teaching module, Education for Chemical Engineers, 6, e31-e55
Olewski T., Snakard M., 2017, Challenges in applying process safety management at university laboratories,
Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 49, 209-214
Pitblado R., M. Bardy, P. Nalpanis, P. Crossthwaite, K. Molazemi, M. Bekaert, V. Raghunathan, 2012,
International comparison on the application of societal risk criteria, Process Safety Progress 31(4): 363-
368
Rae A., Alexander R., 2012, The Science and Superstition of Quantitative Risk Assessment, Proceedings of
PSAM 11 & ESREL 2012, International Association of Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management,
IAPSAM. 3: 2292-2301.
Voronov R.S., Basuray S., Obuskovic G., Simon L., Barat R.B., Bilgili E., 2017, Statistical analysis of
undergraduate chemical engineering curricula of United States of America universities: Trends and
observations, Education for Chemical Engineers, 20, 1-10.